My Pick of Great Fall Reads

In our hugely unsettled world, many are seeking refuge in the company of books.  To guide you in pursuit of books that will transport, educate and inspire, I’m offering my selections for solitary reading or to share with your book group.

FICTION

What We Can Know by Ian McEwan

McEwan’s latest work, which has critics ecstatic.  The main character lives in the post nuclear world of 2119 and is consumed with locating a famous poet’s landmark poem, delivered at a 2014 dinner party of celebrated/egocentric writers and poets. The plot ricochets between 2014 to a century later when the earth’s landscape and scarce resources resemble a dystopian society.  Just 30 pages in, I’m hooked.

MYSTERY

Death At the Sign of The Rook by Kate Atkinson

Sixth in the series of Atkinson mysteries featuring private eye, Jackson Brodie, a cynical, witty and engaging character. This time he is hired to solve a string of art thefts. The story concludes with a murder mystery weekend with a dead body, rendering a playful take on Agatha Christie.

A NATIVE AMERICAN STORY

The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich

Louis Erdrich’s prize winning fiction centers around Native American communities whose memorable characters stay with the reader after the last chapter. This, her most recent novel, is set in North Dakota. It depicts a heart-rendering prairie community whose members must cope with economic hardships and corporate greed while holding onto their traditions to honor the land.

Louise Erdrich, in her bookstore, “Birchbark Books,” which features Native American works

EARLY FEMINIST IMAGININGS

A Short History of Women by Kate Wilson

Collected stories that hopscotch through time, opening in 1915 with an account of Dorothy Trevor Townsend, a British suffragist, who starved herself to death standing for women’s rights.  Other accounts are of Dorothy’s American granddaughter protesting the Iraq War, and complex contemporary women, like an under appreciated chemistry professor and a young mother looking for meaning in her life. 

The Blue Stockings by Susannah Gibson

An absorbing portrait of a group of eighteenth-century privileged English women who defied convention to meet in salons to share books and their writings, pursuing a life beyond the conventional one of wife and mother. In salons attended by both sexes, the Blue Stockings debated as intellectual equals with men. They fought for women to be educated and to have a public role in society. I was reminded of the power women have in a community of like-minded others.

From left, the 18th-century Bluestockings Elizabeth Montagu, Fanny Burney and Hester Thrale.

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

A Very Short History of the Israeli-Palestine Conflict by Ilan Pappe

With the predominance of the almost two-year-old genocide in Gaza, we owe it to ourselves to become informed with the history fueling this catastrophe. Pappe has a much-deserved reputation as the preeminent historical scholar of this conflict, which he traces back to 1882 when the first Zionist settlers arrived in what was then Ottoman Palestine. Pappe traces Israel’s “perpetual subordination of Palestinians.”

MEMOIRS

Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy

The prolific Roy’s latest book, written in response to her mother’s death in 2022. Wanting to make sense of her love-hate relationship with her mother, Roy penned this memoir. She grew up in a single parent household, where her mother loved her, but was verbally and sometimes physically abusive. Revisiting her mother’s life with a new perspective, Roy writes admiringly of her mother’s resilience, which included founding a successful school in Kottayam, India.  Many women will identify with Roy’s complex mother-daughter relationship.

Arundhati Roy with her brother and mother in 1963, standing front of their house in Ooty, India.

Book of Lies:  A Memoir of Sorts by Margaret Atwood

This book won’t hit bookstores until November 4^th but given Atwood’s prolific career and willingness to face her life honestly, I’ve included it.

INSPIRATIONAL WRITINGS

The Gift of Years by Joan Chittister

When aging gets the better of me, where I bemoan my arthritis, loss of mobility and wrinkled face, I consult my dog-eared copy of Chittister to shift my mood. Chittister refuses to see aging as a negative, emphasizing the gifts of our later years, where we learn to identify what has held us back in order to live out our lives contentedly.

To Bless the Space Between Us by John O’Donohue

Soothing spiritual advice.  Many O’Donohue fans start the day by reading from this book, relishing his wise, calming perspective.

                              HAPPY READING TO ALL!